


A Straight Road

by Isis



Category: Outcast - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7088413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justinius's life, a straight road from then to now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Straight Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



**A: Native earth, leveled and, if necessary, rammed tight.**

Senior Centurion Titus Drusus Justinius was a Roman, there was no question of that. He had been born in Rome and raised in Rome, had been taught mathematics and rhetoric by a Greek slave. The principles of engineering he learned from his distinguished father, who after his military career had designed and built some of Rome's finest bridges. His mother, Livia, was a sharply elegant woman who carried herself like a queen, and her own father had been a soldier in the Twentieth Valeria Legion. This man had helped secure Britain for the Emperor Claudius, and in doing so, also secured a small part of Britain for himself: when he returned to Rome he had with him his new wife, a woman of the Atrebates.

She would bequeath to Livia her regal bearing, and eyes the color of a stormy sea. Justinius inherited his father's build and his dark brows, but there was something of his mother and his mother's mother in his grey eyes. Something of Britain, too, buried beneath his Roman features and Roman education, still and solid at the very deepest level of his heart.

**B: Statumen: stones of a size to fill the hand.**

Despite his father's position and the promise of the eventual rank of centurion, Justinius had still been required to go up through the ranks like any legionary soldier. His service began in the _milites_ , marching and guarding and fighting. With his fellow soldiers in the Pannonian woods, he attacked a barbarian stronghold, tearing it down beam by beam and stone by stone as the men who had used it as a fortress fled into the forest. But it was in his heart to become a creator of things, not a destroyer.

"Well done, Justinius," said his centurion, after the foray in Pannonia. "You've got the makings of a fine soldier." And so he did, even as a young man: strong, square shoulders and a powerful frame, the long arms he never would grow into. He had the respect of his fellow men. "I think it's time you received a promotion. How would you like to be my _optio_?"

Justinius's grey eyes met his, level and serious. "I would like it better to be your engineer."

The centurion laughed; Justinius was one who said what he thought. "Following in the footsteps of your father, eh? I think we can start you down that path."

And so he trained as _discens_ _architecti_ , an apprentice in the art of military engineering, in addition to the promotion as the centurion's second-in-command. Some years later, as commander of his own century, he was posted to the far edge of the Empire, the northern part of Britain. A road was to be built between Eboracum and Coria. He would be the man to build it.

**C: Audits: rubble or concrete of broken stones and lime.**

In his grandfather's day, the tribes had been the barbarians that held the land. Canny, perhaps, but really only children, children to subdue and civilize and bring into the house of Rome. Stray dogs who would see their best interests lay with the strong hand that would give them food and a warm place to sleep. Many of the tribes now lived side by side with their Roman neighbors, in houses that would not be out of place on the Aurelian Way but for the thickness of their walls and the other concessions to the climate. They took names honoring the Emperor or one of the generals who had conquered the territory; they cooked with garum and joined the auxilia and honored the Roman gods along with their own. 

Justinius did not underestimate them, as many of the tribunes and legates did. The tribunes and legates were only overseers from a distance; Justinius, as engineer and centurion, sweated alongside both Roman legionaries and native cohortes, filling the path with fine rubble, moving load after load of stones, all laboring to build the road that thrust ever northward, pushing Rome's frontier across the land.

Sometimes, when sunlight broke through the clouds in a sharply distinct column, picking out the edges of the small broken rocks laid in the road-bed; or after a rain, when the world smelled green and bright; or when a man of the Brigantes began to whistle a tune of his clan, and the others around him moved to his rhythm, whether tribesman or Roman; that was when he imagined the road as being all of the world, and the stones laid for its bed all the peoples of the world, and the road that was to be, that would carry travelers from one place to another, something to connect them all.

Adginna had a light in her eyes that made him think of the sunlight breaking through clouds, and golden-brown hair like the fine stems of the undergrowth glistening wet after a rain. She was a woman of the Brigantes, and she made his heart lift with song. Her kin would not speak to her after they wed, but that did not matter, he assured her. He would stand by her side, and she by his, and one day, when the work was complete, this fine straight road would connect her to her family, wherever she and Justinius made their home.

**D: Nucleus: bedding of fine cement made of pounded potshards and lime.**

He had been at the work of road-building when the rider came with his terrible news. He had only just left his wife and their newborn son with Cordaella at their home, had ridden north with a smile on his lips.

The smile disappeared. Maybe, he thought wildly, he would never smile again. 

"Commander," said the young _discens_ _architecti_ who stood patiently by his side. He was called Atellus, and in a year or two he would be sent off to do the engineer's work on another road, or build a bridge, or drain a marsh somewhere else. But for now he was Justinius's assistant. From his tone, Justinius could tell that he'd been trying to get his attention for some time.

He composed his face into a mask. "What is it?"

"The ceramic is ready for your inspection." Atellus gestured toward the pit where the fragments of old pottery had been crushed and ground to a fine grit. It would be added to lime mortar, binding it into a strong cement. This strength was important, for this layer would support the heavy flat paving-stones of the road's surface, and the travelers who would cross the country on this road. It would need to bear the weight of horses, and the men they would carry, and the wagons they would pull, piled high with trade-goods and household things. 

He followed Atellus to the pit and bent to lift a handful of the shards. He let them fall through his fingers, observing the consistency of size, the weight of the particles. His heart had been shattered like a clay vessel, ground into sand. Never again would it hold the joy with which it had been filled.

Yet broken, discarded pots now formed the raw material that would transform this rock-filled ditch into a strong, straight road. He would build this road; he would build more roads. He would build bridges and dams as Rome required. He did not need a wife, or a son. His work would be his legacy. His work would be his life. 

**E: Dorsum: the elliptical surface or crown of the road, made of blocks of lava, travertine, or other stone of the country.**

The storm had spent its fury. They had saved the Rhee Wall, but now they must mend the breaches that the wind and water had opened. The makeshift guard walls, hurriedly built in the lull between tides, would not stand another assault. Ankle-deep in the sucking mud, Justinius directed his men in the repair work. His men, and his son.

His heart swelled with pride when his eyes fell upon Beric, laboring beside a tribesman to unload the big stones that would be used to repair the breaches. He had named Beric as his son, when the Legate had asked, but in truth he had thought of Beric as his son for some time now. 

He remembered that evening at the house of Publius Piso. "A straight paved road for a son," one of the men there had said. "Your born engineer needs no other." Justinius had let the edge of his lip curve in a smile, and he had taken another sip of Publius Piso's good wine, so that he would not have to say anything. He was thinking of Adginna – it had been the face of the British slave-boy that had put him in mind of her – and the old farm on the edge of the marsh. He had built his straight road, and he had drained his marshes, but still, it would have been good to have someone to come home to.

He had not imagined, then, that the slave-boy would find his way to his farmstead. That that boy would eat at his table, work by his side, fill his heart with a strange and quiet joy. It put his work in a new light, to have Beric beside him. It was like the pleasure of placing the smooth and carefully-shaped paving-stones to finish the road's surface. A road did not need to be paved; graveled roads were more common, especially in the countryside. But he was an engineer, a thoroughly good engineer, as he had said. The best roads – the _via munitae_ – these were the paved roads. These roads would last for a long time. These roads would outlive their builders. 

**F: Crepido: raised footway, or sidewalk, on each side of the via.**  
**G: Umbones: edge-stones.**

"Cottia!" Deiana called sharply. "Don't jump on your grandfather! You are a girl, not a hound!"

"It's all right," said Justinius, chuckling. He bent to scoop the child in his arms and lift her to his chest. Cottia giggled and began to pound his shoulders with her tiny fists. "I missed you, too."

He had been lonelier than he'd thought when Beric and his family left for a visit to Deiana's people. Without Cottia's energetic babble and little Justin's wailing, the farmstead had seemed eerily silent. The day after they had departed, he found himself restless. He went out to the horses for a time, then to the hayfields, but there was not that much to do, which was why, of course, Beric had chosen to make the journey now.

Back in the house, Cordaella chased him out of the kitchen. He sat at the table with the spice-cake she'd given him, but he had no appetite. Presently Cordaella came out of the kitchen and sat herself on the opposite bench.

"They will return," she said gently.

Startled, he looked up from the cake. He hadn't realized that he'd been staring at it, unseeing. "I didn't think – well, I suppose it was in my mind. But it is only the shadow of a thought, slipping out of the past. I do not doubt they will all return safely."

Now, standing in the lime-washed room, he felt his heart fill again with contentment. Cottia in his arms, Justin crawling across the floor toward his feet; Deiana and Beric standing close to each other, smiling at their children; Cordaella in the kitchen and Servius in the hall. This was where he belonged; this was where his road had led.

**Author's Note:**

> Image of Via Munita taken from [the Wikipedia entry on Roman roads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads).
> 
> Thanks to Riventhorn for beta reading.


End file.
